Month: December 2014

I am a world-class procrastinator, and I am terrible at coming up with presents on a given date, for example CHRISTMAS. This is a lethal combination and leads to a lot of heartburn. I think I’ve come up with a pretty good solution and thought someone else might benefit from it: the Gift Closet!

The Gift Closet sounds magical, but it really isn’t. I’ve just realized in the past few months that this is a real thing for me and not just a weird habit of stockpiling. Here are some kinds of things I keep in there:

• Cute or interesting items I find when we travel. (For example the lovely cashmere fingerless gloves I bought in Shanghai, or woolens from London.)
• Great “gifty” items I buy in bulk when they are marked down on sites like Joss & Main–some gorgeous French candles are a great example of those. I’ve pilfered a couple of them but they are so pretty I’m sure it is okay!
• Handknits that I make for the pure enjoyment of knitting, but with no planned recipient. We can only use so many hats and cowls in my house, you know? I also happen to keep all of my “extra” jams and preserves in there. Ginger-Peach preserves make a great hostess gift.

This crazy closet has really saved me on several occasions, and I’ve found this month that I actually am relying on it. Why?

First, I have great gifts on hand. On. Hand. Like, in my house and I don’t have to order anything or sweat it out that I’ll get time to shop and I’ll actually find something. The gifts are no less great just because I didn’t purchase or make them with the recipient in mind. I chose the gift for them.

I can make things for pure enjoyment and not worry that I won’t make a deadline or that it won’t suit the recipient. No pressure!

Also, I can be really picky about what goes in the closet, choosing the most lovely things and not settling for what is in front of me in the only store I could get to right this second.

It really is a little like shopping a terrific, eclectic boutique stocked only with items you like. How often does that happen?!

You can also expand this idea to keep toys on hand for the last-minute birthday party invitation. It’s a great way to take advantage of fun toys that are on sale. Thinking back, I used to do this a little bit throughout the years. When one of the girls was about five, I found several pop-up tents on the clearance shelf at Target. Awesome gifts for several little girls in the next year or two, and it was totally stress free.

The hardest part for me is actually pulling the trigger and making the purchase. It is a lot easier to leave my handknits in there than it is to fork over my money for an item that has no known recipient. But I’ve benefitted a lot this year from buying ahead, so I’m going to have to get over that and purchase a few new things. I wonder what I’ll come up with?

Do you have anything that helps reduce your stress around gift-giving? Please share!

See that plate? The fact that it is even in my house, much less actually on the bookshelf properly displayed, is thanks to my setting goals for 2014.

At the end of last year I decided that I needed to take a hard look at what I wanted to do. I have a big, busy family and way too many interests of my own. I needed to have some priorities. I needed goals.

Enter Michael Hyatt’s Best Year Ever program. Introduced last year, it’s a five-day video course on setting and (importantly) actually achieving them. It was the first time I had ever made a list of anything more than resolutions that were put aside by January 15.

I ended up setting seven goals for the year. Some of the goals had several parts but it was all tied together. Limiting the number of goals was one of Michael’s points. Too many, and you can’t focus.

One thing I didn’t do was share my goals with anyone except Bill. That was a mistake. I have this weird idea that if I tell someone my plans, it is like letting air out of a tire and I go all flat on it. Michael swears that accountability and sharing goals is really important. I think I paid the price on this one.

Another place that I kind of fell apart was in regular review of my progress. I had put my goals in Evernote but, try as I might, I just don’t think I’m an Evernote girl.  So after a couple of months I started forgetting to look at it. I did go back and review my goals a couple of weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised!

So without further ado, here are my goals for 2014. I have summarized them, and then said if I hit it or not. The actual goals were pretty detailed, with deadlines and everything:

1. Make my home finished (by 8/31), decor-wise. I made significant progress that I absolutely would not have otherwise made. And hey, I still have two weeks left in 2014!
2. Institute a family time every evening when we don’t eat dinner together. We tried this but didn’t love it. What we DID do, though, was institute a firm family dinner on Sunday evenings where we review the week past, look at the upcoming calendar, and set goals for the week. It has turned into a highlight of our week!
3. Achieve several concrete riding goals, including qualifying for the regional championships in West Palm Beach. Well, Johnni P. the Quarter Horse decided that he really didn’t love dressage. I had to back up and work with my OTTB Dr. Finnegan. He is such a beginner that showing him didn’t happen this year. But I did ride a lot, on a pretty regular schedule, and I don’t feel terrible about missing this goal.
4. Create photo albums for past years that have been neglected. I only got 2013 done, plus our vacation. The kids absolutely loved it. I should be able to get 2014 together pretty quickly. I do still need to go back and work on earlier years, but seeing the reception that the current photo books got certainly is incentive!
5. Sew a quilt from scratch. Did it! Love it! Want to make another!
6. Eat low-carb (like I used to do until it got so boring I couldn’t take it anymore) three days a week. Dead. In. The. Water.
7. Get a family foundation started. Discovered this wasn’t the best vehicle for our goals! That was kind of cool.

One thing that is funny is to see how life interferes and makes some goals really crucial, and others completely irrelevant. Really important decisions presented themselves which weren’t even hinted at last New Year’s Day. (New house, I’m looking at you!)

So, am I doing this again? I think so! Michael Hyatt has completely revamped the course and is offering the VIP course to those of us who did it last year at a significant discount. I learned a lot about myself and I am game to try again, and this time to complete even more goals.

So what about you? Do you make resolutions? Goals? And do you keep them, and let them really change your life? Or are they made and then forgotten? I’d love to know what you think.

Writing clearly and succinctly is very hard. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

I have another post drafted, but it had gotten too long and ponderous. Then I saw this posted at Maggie’s Farm today. It comes close to the point I had been trying to make.

It’s this:

The UVA gang-rape scandal, which turns out to be at a minimum mostly untrue, and possibly completely false, has put that school into a turmoil and dominated media time in the past few weeks. The “fact” of the rape, not the fabrication, is what has been taking up the attention. There are a couple of other college rapes that have added fuel to the fire, even though they might be false, too. The accused in all these cases are young white men.

A couple of months ago a horrific story came out in the UK. In the small town of Rotherham, there was a ring of Pakistini men raping and enslaving English girls. Fourteen hundred of them over twenty years. 1,400. Think about that. Even the police were aware of it. It splashed into the newspapers and since then has hardly made a ripple. That this happened is an absolute fact. The criminals are Pakistini Muslims. There has been virtually no mention of this crime in any newspapers since mid-September.

Why? What is gained by screaming over what becomes nothing? And ignoring the genuine crime that was committed in England? Why can’t we talk about who the criminals are? What is going on?

What are we missing when we don’t confront real evil?

Go read the article. This is linked inside the Maggie’s Farm post and in particular is quite good.

That picture was from Christmas 2004. Nothing like a ten-year-old snapshot to give me a little perspective!

“I’m going to slow down this year, do less, and enjoy the season.” Have you ever said this to yourself right around Thanksgiving? I do. Every year! I’m certain I said it back in 2004, and I think I’ve said it a couple of times this year.

I’m not sure how it happens but every year it seems like it doesn’t happen, in spite of my best efforts. We were crazy-busy or out of town over Thanksgiving (at a wonderful horse show–I’ll post on that soon) and we arrived home late Sunday. Not only were there no Christmas decorations up, I still had a refrigerator full of Thanksgiving leftovers we’d barely been able to enjoy, and I was behind on just regular living activities, even grocery shopping! I have now succeeded in getting the Thanksgiving/fall things put away, but I don’t even have our Advent calendar up, and it is December 2.

I’m only observing what is the normal level of chaos around here–we have evening activities almost every night for the next two weeks, and at least four days of wrestling in the next ten. It probably isn’t much different than anyone else’s craziness. I officially bowed out of a horse show today when I realized that it was on the only empty Saturday between now and Christmas. Probably one of the sanest decisions I’ve made in a while.

I’ve already decided that the tree doesn’t have to be up for it to feel Christmas-y. I’m hoping to get the mantle decorated tomorrow, and maybe get our Christmas dishes out. That actually takes about three minutes because I know exactly where they are!

On the plus side:  not only do I know what I’m wearing to Bill’s company party next weekend, I have already purchased it. It is sitting in my closet just waiting for me to put it on, and it is super-cute. Given that my normal pattern is to (a) make a desperation run to Atlanta the morning of the party and try to find something, anything, that I like, or (b) scrounge in my closet for something acceptable, this is an unbelievable coup for me.

And I AM piling up the magazines and making lists to do some serious cyber-shopping on Saturday while I sit at a wrestling meet. The great thing about these meets is that if you bring something to do, you can get a LOT done while you sit on those bleachers. Not cookies or wrapping, but knitting or ordering or addressing Christmas cards. The wrestling matches don’t last that long!

What are you doing to slow the season? Are you ahead of the game this year? I would love to know how to avoid this–but I don’t really see a way around it until I don’t have wrestlers and football players and singers and guitarists and trombone players and riders and acolytes in my home, and I can’t bear the thought of that.

Well, darn.

I spent all of October writing faithfully each and every day, and I enjoyed the process. I even decided to keep blogging! But of course, blogging every day is just so, well, extreme.  Who needs to do that?

Apparently I do. I found during November that I have a hard time deciding that something is blog-worthy. I overthink things. And then days pass with no post because nothing rises to the level of blog-worthiness. Inertia, in other words.

So I’m going to set my blog back in motion because I like that kind of inertia better. I hope I will occasionally write something of interest. I’m looking forward to seeing where I end up!

So, tonight I am just waking the blog up after its little nap. I’m off to watch “Elf” with my family and get firmly in the Christmas spirit. See you tomorrow!